@Tae Yim your message almost made me teary. Your words brought me so much hope. You were someone who enjoyed the show, yet didn’t lose touch of the fucked up frame of this story and many (most?) Korean series.
You talk about several aspects of Korean dramas that are worth a discussion on themselves! I agree with you in all of them and I’m so glad you brought them up. You have awareness and a critical eagle-eye view so needed when we watch romance, in example.
But what about people that don’t have them or numb themselves because they want to experience a love story? We internalize stuff when we are watching stories. We vicariously feel, experience, what the characters are living. That’s why I’m so afraid for girls to watch this kind of series, because the abuse is undercover. It’s portrayed that if you are having a coffee with your friends in a café and your awful exboyfriend comes all of the sudden and grabs you by the wrist and takes you out and puts you in his car because you are “fun”… is ok, understandable, and you’ll see later it’s for your own good. And what if is not?
You see, storytellers have a responsibility. The stories that we tell and how we tell them, matter. Stories shape our world. For that reason I had so much hope in this screenwriter and ended up so upset. Her work in “it’s ok not to be ok” was groundbreaking. The series had a lot of flaws but overall she took one of the most controvert topics (mental health), and use stories to inform Korean people with rigor and candor about depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, dependent personality disorder… just talking about the patients in the hospital! She used one of the worst words you can tell someone in Korea, “crazy” (미친”michin”), and turned it around with a plot full or characters, and weaving a different folk tale into every single episode. Awesome writing.
Here, she takes her bravery again to turn around another Korean curse, “bastard” (새끼아”sekkia”), hence a misunderstood topic as you mention: orphanage, adoption and so forth. So I was expecting a lot! And, probably reading you all, it comes later all the education about this issue. Yes, thanks for informing people!! But oh no, no like this… Not for me, at least.
I think it has come a point for me that I cannot do what you do (or what I did?) “Ok, I know that what I’m watching is f*up but I’ll put it aside for a bit and collect some gems at the end”. I was like that before so I’m not judging at all!! I spent many happy years in fantasy messed up Kdramaland! Lol. Maybe it’s that I’m too fed up with the same bias and BS? The super production “Queen of Tears” (one of the highest rated in MDL) comes to my mind now. I had to drop off for the same reason. The first episodes made me feel physically sick (all that about “someone wanting someone dead”). I knew I could no longer look the other way around and wait for the happy ending justified the means.
I just hope there are more people like you that have that kind of awareness and don’t internalize gender inequality (with the Joseon / boss-employee type of romances) and all the gender abuse.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts! <3
@Lamu your message just popped up. It was the exact same for me, I stopped after episode 3 :( Thanks for sharing.
